MOVIE REVIEW – Luc Besson was once a true “enfant terrible” of the French filmmaking, directing such striking and smart movies, as The Big Blue, Nikita or The Fifth Element. However, as the years passed, he became more and more predictable, his movies were first critical, then box office flops. In fact, his brand new film, adapted from a French, sci-fi comic book series back from the sixties: Valerian could have been “le grand retour” (the big comeback) everyone was waiting for. It didn’t happen…

Luc Besson has never lacked imagination. That much is obvious to anyone who fell for the French filmmaker’s big-hearted, messy space opera “The Fifth Element” (1997), a dazzling adventure in first-class world building and B-movie storytelling.

In fact, it was a beautiful mess. Same with “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” which is an even more creative, but even less coherent space adventure that takes all the best and all the worst parts of “The Fifth Element” and cranks them up to 11. Besson’s imagination is appealingly unhinged in this eye-popping space opera. If only the story and characters lived up to the spectacle.

An epic mess

Wisecracking duo Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are 28th-century special operatives tasked with maintaining peace and order in the universe. An assignment takes them to Alpha; a sprawling space station set adrift in the void, an ever-expanding Petri dish of a metropolis populated with thousands of species. Everyone is after a “converter,” a cute alien creature that quickly can replicate any object, and the last of its kind.

It’s all very hard to keep straight — or perhaps it’s just hard to care to. The plot really starts to fall apart around the time Rihanna hits the screen as a shape-shifting alien named Bubble who puts on entirely unnecessary but sexy burlesque performance before inexplicably reverting to the gelatinous blob that is her natural shape.

When The Fifth Element came out 20 years ago, it was so strange (space aliens in ancient Egypt, Bruce Willis and his flying taxicab, Milla Jovovich’s and her flame-haired squeak gibberish) that it took American audiences a while to really catch up with it. It was a commercial disappointment that gradually snowballed into a cult hit. Once dismissed, it’s now beloved.

If I had to make a prediction, I’d guess that Valerian will suffer a similar fate. Its imagination is so outré and wild and its rhythms so idiosyncratic, that it’s easy to picture moviegoers not knowing what the hell to do with it until some far off date in the future. During the film’s intoxicating first 30 minutes, for example, I couldn’t decide whether what I was watching was brilliantly crazy or total folly. Then, as the story went on, it came into sharper and sharper focus: Valerian is an epic mess.

Valerian is weak sauce

The other, main problem lies in Besson’s absolutely woeful choice of lead actors. Dane DeHaan, who’s been pretty good in other, quieter films (even in Cure for Wellness, which was also a mess, but not because of DeHaan’s excellent acting here) is not the guy for this part. No wonder his lame come-ons sound wooden.

DeHaan’s main problem, that he severely lacks charisma. (One thing at least Bruce Willis had in the equally messy The Fifth Element). Indeed, if you’re going to call your sci-fi movie “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” you’d better be sure Valerian (Dane DeHaan) is a guy your audience can get behind. Not only skinny, and rather unattractive DeHaan (who looks still a bit sick after Cure for Wellness) looks NOTHING like the original, black haired, Han Solo-like Valerian, but he also acts more like a whiney kid, constantly being too pushy to try to have sex and marry his partner, Laureline.

Director Luc Besson styles him as a cocky space rogue, but Valerian is weak sauce. And so is this movie.

Cara Delevingne, as Valerian’s partner in intergalactic intelligence missions, is a stronger character here, but Ms. Delevigne’s acting is equally boring and uninspired as DeHaan’s. She spends too much time flicking away random marriage proposals from Valerian, though they have zero chemistry.

Eye candy without substance

When not quarreling, the pair adventures through one extravagant 3-D, CGI alienscape after another while trailing a band of alleged terrorists, who are a race of lithe, iridescent utopia-dwellers called Pearls. Their prolog, paired with a chronology of intergalactic diplomacy, is the film’s one solid bit.

However, Valerian and the Needlessly Long Title defies our instinct for something, anything to make sense. Besson’s parade of soul melds and virtual realities is complexity as camouflage for the fact that little happens. The movie is a hamster wheel, motion going nowhere.

Well, almost nowhere. As with The Fifth Element, Besson has a knack for sci-fi eye candy, creating one geek-friendly screen saver after another. Popular choices may include Delevingne cramming her head into a giant space jellyfish to regain memory, Rihanna‘s virtual instant-makeover dance, or any shot featuring Ethan Hawke’s sleazebag Jolly the Pimp. I’m partial to the “converter,” the reason why everyone’s running around: a pastel armadillo sweating pearls.

Such insane imagery amuses on some Barbarella/Zardoz level, at which goofy imagination and campy personality can overrule most complaints. Valerian displays reckless imagination and zero substance.

-BadSector-